Nine Inch Nails, Soundgarden set for mutually assured destruction?

The last time Nine Inch Nails and Soundgarden played Worcester, both bands were at full nuclear-strike capability.

And, the fact that these two undisputed powerhouses are playing together Tuesday night at the Xfinity Center in Mansfield, it might be the end of humanity as we know it.

When Trent Reznor rolled his "Pretty Hate Machine" into Worcester back in 2008, he sonically and visually pummeled everything in its path.

NINs' latest tour promises to serve up another bone-crunching, flesh-pounding and intensely riveting set of Sisyphean symphonies, nihilistic (de)compositions and plenty of (spoiled) food for thought for the wretched to devour.

Seeing Nine Inch Nails at the inaugural Lollapalooza (performing outdoors in daylight no less) and opening for Jesus and Mary Chain on Landsdowne Street and every subsequent show in these parts since (including one last fall at the TD Garden in Boston), Reznor always plays to kill and like it's his last night on earth.

Touring behind "Hesitation Marks," Nine Inch Nails' eighth studio album (and first since winning both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for co-writing "The Social Network" soundtrack), the razor-sharp Reznor has always been a reliable and relentless one-man wrecking crew and one of the most disciplined and consistent rockers when it comes to putting on a full-throttle performance.

While the stop-start, chaotic-to-disquieting-calm maelstrom "March of the Pigs," the sadomasochistic, bump-and-grind "Closer" and NIN's nihilistic masterpiece "Hurt" are all prerequisite showstoppers, it will be interesting to see live how Reznor (the self-anointed "Mr. Self Destruct") comes to terms with his inner-Travis Bickle on "Copy of A." Or how he handles unwillingly going through a personality adjustment (via the government) on "Came Back Haunted," or works to find a way back to his lover's pulsating, beating and blood-spurting heart on "Find My Way."

Whether Reznor, the Marquis de Sade of modern rock, will take his faithful minions at Mansfield closer to God is very unlikely but it's a safe bet that he will take them to rock 'n' roll heaven (or, if you prefer, hell).

As hard rock bands still making the rounds go, Soundgarden is virtually unstoppable and arguably has no equal. And touring behind the 20th anniversary reissue of "Superunknown," we're talking a (sound)garden of earthly delights.

Without a doubt, Soundgarden's Chris Cornell is one of today's best rock singers. With a tempestuous tenor of sweetness and steel, this powerhouse vocalist effortlessly oozes tenderness, torment and toughness, sometimes all simultaneously. And even though he has a tendency to put himself in a rusty cage of his own making, the scruffy front man will always find parole as long as he has those blessed pipes.

Last year in Worcester, Cornell's voice arguably sounded better and stronger than ever and his band-mates were a lean, mean, fighting rock 'n' roll machine to boot.

The calm, cool and collected guitar god Kim Thayil supplied plenty of incendiary riffs that scorched the venue, while Ben Shepherd's locomotive bass lines and Matt Cameron's pulverizing drumbeats and offbeat time signatures helped secure the mind-altering, life-affirming, earth-shattering sonic epiphany one would have hoped and wished for from one of Seattle's seminal "grunge' bands.

Cornell was a marvel to behold, letting loose with what would seem to be a series of virtual impossible high notes in heavy succession on the stellar showstopper, "Superunknown."

The grunge crooner plays a man "born with a thousand little holes and a tear to fill up every one" on the trippy, soul-searcher "A Thousand Days Before." His metaphysical musings about isolation and eternity, spirituality and self, were fleshed out through a Thayil's Middle-Eastern-tinged guitar riffs.

On the massive rocker "Fell on Black Days," Cornell's impressive multi-octave range seem to have a hypnotic effect on the audience, which kept woo, woo, wooing along in response to the singer.

The sludgy, crunchy encore closer "Outshined," not only proved that Soundgarden's place in the annals of rock 'n' roll history is secure, but that they are still a force to be reckoned with. (Craig S. Semon)